In Guayaquil, a populous city in Ecuador, a wealthy young man is trying to evict 250 families that have been squatting on the land he inherited from his father. The leader of the squatters is willing to negotiate, but can this tense conflict be resolved without bloodshed?

ABOUT THE DIRECTOR:​

SEBASTIAN CORDERO (1972) spent his childhood in Ecuador, his teenage years in Paris, and his college years in Los Angeles, where he studied at USC’s Film Writing program. In 1995 he returned to Ecuador, intent on making a feature in a country where filmmaking was practically non-existent at the time. To date, Sebastian has directed six feature films: Ratas, Ratones, Rateros (Venice), Crónicas (Cannes, Toronto, San Sebastian, Sundance, Rotterdam), Rabia (Toronto, Tokyo Special Jury Prize), Pescador (Guadalajara), Europa Report. Such is Life in the Tropics is his latest.

June 14th

Alba

Directed by Ana Cristina Barragán I Featuring Macarena Arias, Pablo Aguirre and Amaia Merino I Written by Ana Cristina Barragán.

Alba is eleven years old. One afternoon, her mother is admitted to the hospital and she has to live with Igor, her father, who she barely knows. Igor’s attempts to get closer to Alba, the girls in her school, and her first kiss serve to propel her path to adolescence and acceptance of her family.

ABOUT THE DIRECTOR:

Ana Cristina Barragán (Ecuador, 1987) is a screenwriter and director.

Alba, her first feature film premiered at the Rotterdam Film Festival and was selected by Horizontes Latinos at the San Sebastian Film Festival.

The film has won seventeen awards at various festivals, including a Fipresci at the festival of Toulouse, the Lions Award at the Rotterdam Film Festival, and a Jury Mention at the San Sebastian Film Festival.

Ana Cristina has directed three short films, Awake, Anima, and Domingo Violeta, which premiered as the official selection of Locarno. She’s currently developing her second feature film, Octopus Skin. In 2016 it received development support from the Hubert Bals Fund and was selected for Tres Puertos Cine.

June 15th

Directed by Leonard Zelig I Featuring Roberto Manrique, Marisa Román, María Elisa Camargo and Andrés Crespo I Written by Leonard Zelig and Roberto Manrique.
Rubén has been diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. He has three months to live or about a year and a half with treatment. He has decided to end his life with dignity, leaving no loose ends.

*Special screening. Not accounted for competition.

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Maravilla, the New York-based organization dedicated to raising awareness of Latin America through films and the arts, has announced the third annual edition of the Ecuadorian Film Festival in New York.

The competitive film festival, the first of its kind in the world dedicated to showcasing and celebrating the burgeoning cinema of Ecuador, will take place June 9-17 in seven different venues across New York’s Tri-State area: Village East Cinemas in Manhattan; Queens Museum; Syndicated Bar Theater Kitchen, in Brooklyn; The Picture House, in Pelham; the Plaza Art Center, in Patchogue; Cinema Arts Centre, in Huntington; and Ramapo Art and Cultural Center, in Spring Valley.

This year’s festival will present ten feature-length and eight short films in their U.S. or New York premiere, with the presence of the filmmakers. The festival will open with the North American premiere of the documentary feature My Aunt Toty / Mi tía Toty by León Felipe Troya, a portrait of Toty Rodríguez, the Ecuadorian actress who made her career in France in the 1960s who became a well-known diva in the South American country, and an icon of the women’s rights movement in the country.

Other highlights of the festival’s third edition include the Rotterdam Film Festival favorite Alba, the promising debut feature by Ana Cristina Barragán, and the Ecuadorian candidate to the 88th Academy Awards Such Is Life in the Tropics / Sin muertos no hay carnaval by Sebastián Cordero.

Expected to attend this year’s edition are 20 guests including directors Cordero and Barragán, and actors Toty Rodriguez, Andrés Crespo, and Roberto Manrique. EFFNY will present two awards. A jury composed of renowned film professionals composed by film programmer and documentary ﬁlmmaker María Campaña, Tribeca Film Festival’s Lorren Hammonds and film academic Marguerita Tortora, founder and director of the Latino and Iberian Film Festival at Yale, will present the award for Best Film, and the public attending the screenings will vote for the Audience Award.

The Ecuadorian Film Festival in New York is produced in partnership with Brooklyn’s Syndicated Bar Theater Kitchen, and made possible thanks to the generous support of the Ministry of Culture of Ecuador and Telemundo 47. It is also supported by the Queens Museum, Cinema Tropical, Café Velez, Santana, Hoja Verde, Botánica and jetBlue.

The Picture House

The lovingly restored 1921 theater is a community-based, mission-driven, non-profit alternative to commercial movie theaters, presenting the best in independent, international, documentary, and classic cinema.